“Nay, nay, Gonzaga, your methods are all wrong. Tell him—— Nay, I will question him myself. Messer Fortemani, you have been guilty of an act of gross abuse. You and your men were hired for me by Messer Gonzaga, and to you was given the honourable office of captain over them, that you might lead them in this service of mine in the ways of duty, submission, and loyalty. Instead of that, you were the instigator of that outrage this morning, when murder was almost done upon an inoffensive man who was my guest. What have you to say?”
“That I was not the instigator,” he answered sullenly.
“It is all one,” she returned, “for at least it was done with your sanction, and you took a share in that cruel sport, instead of restraining it, as was clearly your duty. It is upon you, the captain, that the responsibility rests.”
“Lady,” he explained, “they are wild souls, but very true.”
“True to their wildness, maybe,” she answered him disdainfully. Then she proceeded: “You will remember that twice before has Messer Gonzaga had occasion to admonish you. These last two nights your men have behaved riotously within my walls. There has been hard drinking, there has been dicing, and such brawling once or twice as led me to think there would be throats cut among your ranks. You were warned by Messer Gonzaga to hold your followers in better leash, and yet to-day, without so much as drunkenness to excuse them, we have this vile affair, with yourself for a ringleader in it.”
There followed a pause, during which Ercole stood with bent head like one who thinks, and Francesco turned his wonder-laden glance upon this slight girl with the gentle brown eyes which had been so tender and pitiful. Marvelling at the greatness of her spirit, he grew—all unconsciously—the more enslaved.
Gonzaga, all unconcerned in this, eyed Fortemani in expectation of his answer.
“Madonna,” said the bully at last, “what can you look for from such a troop as this? Messer Gonzaga cannot have expected me to enlist acolytes for a business that he told me bordered upon outlawry. Touching their drunkenness and the trifle of rioting, what soldiers have not these faults? When they have them not, neither have they merit. The man that is tame in times of peace is a skulking woman in times of war. For the rest, whence came the wine they drank? It was of Messer Gonzaga's providing.”
“You lie, hound!” blazed Gonzaga. “I provided wine for Madonna's table, not for the men.”
“Yet some found its way to them; which is well. For water on the stomach makes a man poor-spirited. Where is the sin of a little indulgence, Madonna?” he went on, turning again to Valentina. “These men of mine will prove their mettle when it comes to blows. They are dogs perhaps—but mastiffs every one of them, and would lose a hundred lives in your service if they had them.”